


Desiccate

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fallen Angels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 20:48:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sleaze of it struck her the most; how God had so many ‘children’, hundreds of them, that he couldn’t possibly remember all their names. Like a traveller out for all that he could plunder, he had conceived of and birthed them into the world, hundreds of aching bodies, hundreds of beings full of capital-L Love and Light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desiccate

> _If you start to think that it’s all over now_  
>  That the work you have done has been lost somehow   
> You wake up hungry in this world you’ve made   
> So much so how could you be turned away 
> 
> **_-_ Hallelujah, Theo Mirah**

The sleaze of it struck her the most; how God had so many ‘children’,  _hundreds_ of them, that he couldn’t possibly remember all their names. Like a traveller out for all that he could plunder, he had conceived of and birthed them into the world, hundreds of aching bodies, hundreds of beings full of capital-L Love and Light.

She’s a waitress, most days, and how they accepted her application, she’ll never know. She could read and write when she first came here, but often she would slip too easily into different dialects, babble at them in Arabic before realising her mistake, to abject and terrified stares.

She realises she’s no treat for the xenophobic; her vessel is white, a fact she’s sometimes thankful of, but other days she hears the soft lilt of Spanish, the rasp of Greek, and remembers ancient shores, a language more fluid than the one she’s been forced to adopt. She wishes she’d had the fortune of a different body; perhaps an older man, a white man, someone who commands respect – perhaps a woman of colour, someone with a family.

But she is alone in this tiny corner of the world she’s found herself sliding filthily into. The girl she inhabits now was consumed by her without permission, so fast it made her sick to remember it; thrust from her body and up into heaven without so much as a kiss goodbye. She seems to have no family, not even a name. She made one up on her first day – now, she is Charlotte. The syllables required for her old name would tear holes in the ears of those who heard it (not that she could hope to speak it, now).

She Fell to earth without noise; pushed the girl from this body and then opened human eyes to a tiny apartment. The girl slept on the floor; had a mattress, but barely any sheets to speak of. The place stank of dry rot, the neighbours were loud, and frightening.

For ten days she wasted away in silence, perched on the edge of the rank-smelling mattress, trapped in a body that was not her own. She listened to the noise; the desert outside, the yelling at night and in the early morning, couples fucking and fighting and wringing each other dry with their endless, insufferable rage.

In terror, she ventured outside only when she had to; when faintness, from hunger and thirst, overrode her senses and pinned her to the mattress. After that, she rose, but in a fashion so unlike the phoenix she could barely count it as having risen at all. She plucked herself – thin and wanting – from the floor, and left the apartment behind. In six months, she has not chosen to return.

She works at the diner every day, and says little. The world outside is huge to her now-tiny body, and though she remembers battles, though she remembers clashing swords, she is fragile in this form, and unbearably small. Sometimes, on her short lunch break, when she hides among the storage area and tries not to draw attention, she watches the people, walking around her, and wonders if they know what she is.

The lights in the sky were explained to be meteorites; the fact that no metorites were _found_ seems to be irrelevant; even now, in front of her, people talk about the worldwide shower; but she has never felt more dirty.

She waits tables. One day, two boys come in that she recognises; the demon and the righteous one, in their long, black car; and another body, not quite a man.

His eyes are blue, hair black; he wears clothes, and has  _mannerisms,_ and talks in flawless English. He slides into the booth beside the other boys, and when he looks up at her, he doesn’t seem to recognise her at all; but she knows him.

She pauses for a moment, while taking their order. She stares at his face. One of the boys, shorter, crammed in the booth beside the man, asks if she is alright; but she does not reply.

She asks them, again, what they wanted. Her brother stares at her in silence, and orders nothing.

As she turns away to the kitchen, she leans down, and whispers in his ear. A word; singular. In a language they both know.

His eyes widen; his hands shake, where they grip the table. His breath stutters in and out of his throat.

The boys call him a nickname, a shred; some strange, aborted thing, all trace of God removed. She hears them do it, as she walks away.

She tells one of the other waitresses she’s taking her break, and forgoes the stockroom for the back door. She sits in the dust a little ways from the diner, legs folded beneath her, and gathers handfuls of dirt in her hands.

The desert stretches out ahead of her, and she feels it; all of it. This quavering emptiness, this silence. Were it possible now, she would blend herself with the sand, become it; she feels, in that moment, that she is capable of little else.

But she remains; solid, and strange, and a little hungry. Blood thudding and pumping in veins not her own.

What she whispered to him in that old tongue is irrelevant; she only wanted to tell him _, I am here_.

No one else seems to know it. 


End file.
